USA Today reports that Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror, Sin City) will produce an adaptation of Red Sonja starring his fiancee Rose McGowan. Longtime Rodriguez associate Douglas Aarniokoski will direct the film, planned for release in 2010.
Created in 1973 Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith for use in the Conan comics then published by Marvel, Red Sonja is a sword-wielding heroine in a mesh bikini who has pledged not to lie with a man unless he defeated her in fair combat. Dynamite Entertainment currently publishes the Red Sonja comics.
Rodriguez told USA Today that McGowan, who starred in his Planet Terror segment of Grindhouse, brought him the Red Sonja script.
“I found it very entertaining,” he said. “Sonja was strong, smart, cunning — just about everything she’d have to be to survive.”
According to Rodriguez, the origin story takes its cues from the Red Sonja comic books, and from the works of Conan creator Robert E. Howard.
Red Sonja last appeared on the big screen in 1985, in the poorly received adaptation starring Brigitte Nielsen and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I thought these two were making a Barbarella remake.
Either way, I’d rather Rodriguez make Sin City 2 or Machete than making a movie to make his home wrecking girlfriend happy.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Rose McGowan. She’s always played strong characters, even when she played bad girls. She’s mega-hot, she’s proven she can handle the action stuff, BUT SHE’S 5 FOOT 3!!!!! The Red Sonja in the comics was a monster (at least 6 foot!) Even the lousy movie with Brigitte Nielsen, she was 6 foot 1. And as bad as that one was, people will remember that one. It’ll be “Red Sonja - as played by mini-Me!” Unless someone finds a way to somehow CG her taller, she’s going to laughed out of the theater.